Posted January 28, 2008 
Comments(6) 
The legal position of the world’s number one torrent tracker and a website is again tested. The prosecutor of Sweden is about to file a suit against The Pirate Bay for accessory to crime and conspiracy to break copyright law. What do you think, are they criminals that should be convicted, or perhaps heroic Robin Hood’s of the Internet age?
Posted January 26, 2008 Comments(0) 
Antiguan SlySoft, Inc. released updated versions of their products including Clone DVD v2.9.1.5. The changelog looks pretty good, including improved layer break handling. They have also a 20% discount coupon code available valid until 28th of January. Visit SlySoft for downloads, and more information.
Version 2.9.1.5: 2008 01 20
- New: Improved layer break handling
- Fix: “Clone 0″ error with some discs
- Fix: If a PGC contained multiple programs per chapter, parts of the PGC
were blanked.
- Fix: In rare situations Audio and Subtitle streams were not copied, if
“Enable auto-selection for removed streams” was enabled
- Some minor changes and improvements
Posted January 23, 2008 Comments(3) mkv2vob is a software for converting .MKV or .TS video files into Sony PlayStation 3 compatible format. Files with compatible content streams are remuxed without transcoding, so the process is very quick and there is no quality loss. mkv2vob can detect incompatible audio and video streams and transcode them automatically into a compatible format. It can also encode subtitles into the video stream.
Author:3r1c
License: Freeware, donations accepted
Posted January 21, 2008 Comments(19) 
The question of which operating system is faster is often heard in Windows vs. Linux debates, but unfortunately it is very common that total crap is said or written about it. What is surprising about it that even information sources that you might consider somewhat professional can be totally wrong in their beliefs, or just fail to be objective while passionately debating for the operating system they favour. Couple of days ago I saw Desktoplinux.com making a statement that OpenSUSE or PCLinuxOS 2007 require far less resources than Windows Vista or XP. So which one is really the best performing or least resource hungry?
Posted January 16, 2008 Comments(0) 
Hot from the press! I just received information that VSO Software has just released a public release candidate of their upcoming ConvertXtoDVD software. If your license key is less than a year old, you are entitled for a free upgrade. I case you didn’t know, ConvertXtoDVD is THE best solution for converting and recording your video files into DVD-Rs. It is very simple to use, offers a nice selection of settings, the encoding process is fast and the video quality very good. New version 3 comes with improved menus, but also the encoding/conversion engine is even better than before. This is highly recommended software, so check out the release candidate version now!
UPDATE 18-Jan-2008. More complete list of changes:
New features of ConvertXtoDVD 3:
- Advanced menu creation
- File merging
- Multi-Core processor support
- New improved engine
- Quality advisor wizard
- More supported formats
Posted January 15, 2008 Comments(13) 
…as if there ever was a real war in between these two formats. The Blu-ray camp had a much better offering to begin with, but Toshiba decided to challenge them anyway with the HD DVD. Toshiba had one edge over Blu-ray, and that was the production and/or transition cost from DVD to high definition technology, which is supposed to be significantly cheaper with HD DVD. But if Toshiba and HD DVD camp had an ace in their sleeve, unfortunately for them the Blu-ray camp and Sony had the remaining three.
Posted January 11, 2008 Comments(5) 
Gotta give credit for the gOS. In no time they are able to produce a Linux distribution that raises a huge hype and also made it to the Wal-Mart shelves - and to customers’ homes. Actually gOS is not an independent operating system, but a remastered version of Ubuntu Linux. The main difference is that they replaced the Gnome desktop environment of Ubuntu with Enlightenment, which is supposedly easier on the system resources and provides Macintosh OSX like bling for the visuals.
To be honest for some time I have been bugged by Ubuntu and Canonical. They managed to get significant user base and the most recent wave of desktop Linux hype is greatly due to Ubuntu’s success. They put a lot of effort in productization of Debian into a end-user friendly desktop environment, but in my opinion they do a half-ass job. While Ubuntu is very good and a solid platform, they have chosen not to polish the user interface and desktop environment at all. Their plain vanilla Gnome configuration combined with the brown/orange theme is anything but appealing.
Posted January 9, 2008 Comments(0) 
Not too many authors in the blogosphere seem to be interesting in DVD recording and blank media quality. While the recorder and media technology has evolved and matured over the years, the quality of available media on the market still varies a lot. In fact it can vary from absolute rubbish to high quality and reliable media. I had the chance to check out the current 16x speed offering of Imation for both standards, the DVD-R and DVD+R.
Imation is one of those brands that outsources their production completely, and therefore one can get all kinds of media from various manufacturers under the Imation label. Another major label with similar strategy is Memorex. I remember being very upset in Imation in the early CD-R recording age (8x speed was hot then), when they distributed horrible media under their label. Later I have found some excellent 8x DVD-R media from Imation (by RICOH) and and equally great DVD+R 16x Imation media (by Verbatim / MCC). At the moment however, they seem to be shipping media made by MBI, Moser Baer India. I picked a few DVD-R and DVD+R 16x speed media from a huge stock of Imation media and gave them a whirl using Pioneer and LiteOn recorders.
Posted January 8, 2008 Comments(10) SmartLabs tsMuxeR is a transport stream muxer. It can demux and remux content streams from one container format to another.
Supported output formats:
Supported video codecs:
Supported audio codecs:
Supported subtitles:
Supported containers and formats:
Note: tsMuxeR is under rapid developement and format support and features are like to improve faster than this page is updated.
Author: smartLabs
License: Freeware
Posted January 8, 2008 Comments(1) Media Player Classic (usually abbreviated as MPC) is a light wight, but fully featured audio and video player. It’s user interface is very similar to the old Windows Media Player, thus the name Classic. It has built in codecs and support for VideoCD, Super VideoCD and DVD playback. It utilizes the DirectShow architecture, so it can automatically use any DirectShow decoders that are installed in the system (see: FFDSHOW).
MPC is a highly recommended replacement for Windows Media Player, and combined with FFDSHOW it is suited for all typical audio/video playback uses.
Author: Gabest
License: Open source
